[MGalasso]

I recently recovered my G4 from a hole in my basement. I am looking to run Tiger, along with CS2, but unfortunately, my machine needs serious upgrading. I am not savvy on upgrades. Please advise. Sadly, these are the specs; G4 PC 100, 350mhz, 128MB, 10GB hard drive. I do know that I can max out the RAM to 1GB, but is that enough? Is the processor too slow?

[Xyrrus]

First off, you'll need to upgrade the RAM before the CS2 installer will even let you proceed. Tiger should run fine, but I think Photoshop and the other CS2 apps are going to be fairly painful. If you have a need to run them, I'd run the CS1 versions, which should perform a bit better.

If you're on a tight budget, you can probably max the ram for under $100. Also, putting a larger HDD in there wouldn't hurt and is fairly inexpensive. When installing tiger, make sure to turn off all the stuff you don't need (language packs, in particular) to conserve drive space.

http://www.adobe.com/products/creati...ystemreqs.html

-Xy

[bowwowman]

Save the drama fo yo momma

then do the math:

1) Ram $100
2) Big HD $100
3) CPU Upgrade ~$200
4) 32/64mb Video card ~$75
5) Tiger $100

for that same $400-500, you could buy a very nice GE or QS (or a refurb intel mini), updgrade it somewhat, and still be WAY ahead in terms of overall speed and better performance. Plus you could part out the old G4 & make back some of the cost of a better machine

[pra9ab0y]

I would go with something a little newer!

[Gir]

You're better off putting your money into a faster G4.

That G4 is a "yikes!" model. The mainboard in it is a retooled G3 yosemite board and it will only take G4s up to 550MHz before it throttles down the bus, which slows the whole system down. It will take G3s (I think you can get G3s up to 1.1GHz).

It goes without saying that you'll probably want a bigger hard drive, as tiger itself can use quite a bit. And the CS2 suite takes every bit as much if not more. The IDE controller in that particular model will only address the first 127GB on each hard drive.

Depending on how intensive you plan to get, 1gb should be enough, but more is always better. Having said that, I've never hard more than 1.4gb of ram allocated at any one time on my mdd.

The other thing to think about - if you ever want to upgrade the graphics card, that system only has a PCI slot. It won't do quartz or core image.

You'll definitely want as much ram as you can get.

A Quicksilver would be a nice upgrade...dual cpu would be especially nice.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Xyrrus 

First off, you'll need to upgrade the RAM before the CS2 installer will even let you proceed. Tiger should run fine, but I think Photoshop and the other CS2 apps are going to be fairly painful. If you have a need to run them, I'd run the CS1 versions, which should perform a bit better.

If you're on a tight budget, you can probably max the ram for under $100. Also, putting a larger HDD in there wouldn't hurt and is fairly inexpensive. When installing tiger, make sure to turn off all the stuff you don't need (language packs, in particular) to conserve drive space.

Adobe - Creative Suite: System requirements

-Xy

You'd have a hard time getting both Tiger and CS2 onto a 10Gb HD.

[Rassie]

Your system can be upgraded, however, you need to find out what is limitations are, finding out how far you can expand your RAM and hard drive, installing hard drives beyond the limitations require special utilities from the manufacturer to configure the system in BIOS. How old is your G4, all new apple Macs are suing Intel processors and your G4 has a Motorola processor, it could be quite expensive to change processors and may also require a different motherboard as well. It depends on alot of factors, I am a computer systems specialist and always ask first, what do you use your computer for, does it currently fit your needs, and how much money do you want to spend? After answering these questions, make your decision from there. If you have any other questions, I'll check into it for you

Rassie

[OreoCookie]

I don't think upgrading this machine makes any financial sense. You should rather invest the money in either a used iMac/PowerMac or a Mac mini.

[tr]

Originally Posted by Gir 

You're better off putting your money into a faster G4.

That G4 is a "yikes!" model. The mainboard in it is a retooled G3 yosemite board and it will only take G4s up to 550MHz before it throttles down the bus, which slows the whole system down. It will take G3s (I think you can get G3s up to 1.1GHz).

It goes without saying that you'll probably want a bigger hard drive, as tiger itself can use quite a bit. And the CS2 suite takes every bit as much if not more. The IDE controller in that particular model will only address the first 127GB on each hard drive.

Depending on how intensive you plan to get, 1gb should be enough, but more is always better. Having said that, I've never hard more than 1.4gb of ram allocated at any one time on my mdd.

The other thing to think about - if you ever want to upgrade the graphics card, that system only has a PCI slot. It won't do quartz or core image.

You'll definitely want as much ram as you can get.

A Quicksilver would be a nice upgrade...dual cpu would be especially nice.

actually, from the information given, this machine doesn't have to be a Yikes, but could be a Sawtooth (AGP graphics). you may not remember, but with the intro of the G4's, Apple did the infamous "speed dump", where they couldn't supply 500 mhz G4's for the top of the line Power Macs. the original lineup were G4's in 400, 450, 500 mhz varieties. due to the speed dump, that turned into 350, 400, 450 mhz models. so in december '99, there indeed was a G4 350 AGP model. a couple months later, when Apple could supply G4 500's, the bumped the model line up, and the G4 350 AGP was eliminated.

i would look at this machine as a project of spending the least amount of money to get this going. i sort of did the same thing with a G3 B&W that someone gave to me. i dropped in more RAM (put a gig), replaced the HD with a 30 gb, and put on Tiger and CS2. if i had your G4, i'd say find some RAM on ebay, drop in a bigger HD, but keep the 10 gb drive a secondary to be used for scratch. it should work decently. how do i know? my main machine is a G4 450 Sawtooth, and i use CS2 (mainly Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign) on a daily basis.

tr

[P]

If you say that you know that the max RAM is 1 GB, then it's the Yikes (PCI) model. The Sawtooth (AGP) model had a maximum RAM of 2 GB.

I agree that it makes absolutely no sense to try to upgrade that machine. The best idea I have is to reuse the box for a DIY PC - it's a nice box. If you look at it like a hobby project, it turns into something else. Many of the parts that you need to upgrade it with are so old by now that you can get them used very cheap or for free. With a 1 GB RAM and a bigger HD, it would run Tiger nicely. Not so sure about CS2, but I suppose it might work.

If you really want to run Tiger and CS2 as cheaply as possible, get a Mac mini, a RAM bump and CS3 when it's released.

[Gir]

Originally Posted by tr 

...so in december '99, there indeed was a G4 350 AGP model....

tr

Wow.. how did I forget that? Oh well.. live and learn I suppose.